March 17, 2010

Favorite things: BALLS!

We are not a sports people. Unlike most North Americans, Kevin and I don't play games with balls or sticks or nets, and we don't watch games with balls or sticks or nets either. (Except croquet. I really like croquet.) We were also kind of hopeful that Colin would share our distaste for sports, if only because neither of us wanted to spend years of our lives driving him to and from soccer/baseball/football/hockey/tennis/golf or lacrosse practice or sitting through all those games.

But I think we might be out of luck. Colin seems to have a thing for balls.

In fact, "ball" was his first word, right after Mama and Dada. Actually, if you measure his first real word as being an utterance imbued with meaning--as opposed to the meaningless chatter babies make that just sounds like words--then "ball" was really his first word. I can still remember how exciting it was to sit there in the bathtub with him while he was playing with his balls--a bath-time basketball set that he got on his birthday from a dear friend--and he was handing me all the balls one-by-one. And I would say "thank you" and then hand them back to him and say "ball." Then all of a sudden, he looked at the ball and then looked at me and then paused a moment and then said "ball." It was amazing to watch that flush of recognition spread over his face. You could just see him thinking: "Oh, all these things she says aren't just nonsense. This means a ball." I squealed with such delight that Kevin came rushing into the room to make sure we hadn't all drowned.

After that exciting discovery, he was hooked on talking and on balls. Even now he just walks around the house, ball in hand, saying "ball, ball, ball" or "ball, ball, BALL." He often says "bauble" or "baw-ul" instead of the more straightforward "ball." I like to think that it's a little of my southern drawl getting passed on to him, but that may be wishful thinking. But oh, what fun it is to think about what my son will sound like when he can say whole sentences! What will he want to talk about? What will his interests be?

If his first words are anything to go by, he's going to be really into balls and sports. And that's OK, I guess. He actually seems some real ball skills. Why just in the past week he's learned how to bounce a little rubber bouncy ball across the living room floor (good times), and now he's working on throwing the dog's tennis ball. And, I know I'm biased, but I think that boy has a serious pitcher's arm--at only 13 months! Baseball might be in our future yet.